Known telephones include so-called sensor telephones, which collect biological and/or medical data from sensors on a human body or from sensors which are located on the surface of the telephone. The data captured by the sensors are either just recorded for a later read out and processing of these data. The advantage is that a data such as blood pressure, skin resistance etc. can easily be captured over a longer period of time without requiring a dedicated medical device for doing that. In other types of such sensor phones the data undergo simple processing steps such as comparing the captured data with predetermined threshold values and notifying the user that a certain parameter exceeds its threshold value. In even more sophisticated sensor phones the data are sent to a network server, which provides feedback according to the interpretation of these data. Applications interpreting these data which are running on the server may use much more computing resources then those applications which are used on the mobile phone for interpretation purposes.
From the German patent application DE 10042101 A1, capturing and interpreting biological information about the user of a mobile communication device is known. The method relies on a communication device which is provided with biological sensors which are mounted on the surface of the mobile communication device in areas which are touched by the user of the communication device in normal operation. These sensors capture biological parameters such as blood pressure, heart frequency, body temperature and some blood values. The captured data which is stored on a chip allow evaluation of those values over a longer period of time. In addition to that the infringement of threshold values is immediately indicated to the user of the communication device. Finally, the communication device is adapted to notify the emergency room of a hospital in emergency cases. The notification comprises predefined standard texts.
In the international patent application WO 03/094720 A1 a cell phone device for remote monitoring of cardiac electrical activity is described. The device comprises a regular mobile telephone device which is introduced into a harness which is provided with necessary sensors to capture biological and/or medical parameters of the user of the device. In addition to that the harness is equipped with a controller, a memory and a modulator. The controller controls the timing of data submission into the telephone device and uses the memory to prevent loss of biological data. The modulator prepares the captured data signal for a submission to the telephone device input. The conditioned signal is in acoustic form.
Devices as those described above and which are known in the prior art either require a deep integration into the mobile phone impacting both hardware and software of the mobile phone or suffer from limitations with regard to the data communication capabilities.
Consequently, there remains a desire to conceive a mobile communication device allowing capturing biological and/or medical data of the user of the mobile communication device with a limited impact on the hardware and software of a conventional mobile communication device.